After an easy, ad-ware free installation, the program adds a Windows 7-style Start button to your desktop. Clicking this displays a fairly accurate replica of the old Start menu, with a Search box, pinned programs, links to system folders, and so on. And of course there's a Shutdown menu with Restart, Sleep and all the other usual options.

One immediate problem we noticed is that the Search didn't always find what we needed. We're not sure whether this was due to something unusual on our test system, or a more general problem.

OneStart is generally very configurable. If you're bored with the Windows 7 Start button, for instance, you can choose from 14 others (including Apple, Linux and Android). There are a few more available online, or you can make your own.

The menu itself can be tweaked in many ways. You're able to set its background colour, transparency (on or off), the elements you'd like to be included (pinned applications, system folders, Recently Opened programs, the Run box), the default Power button option, and more.

What's unusual here, though, is that you can also ditch all this, and choose to display part of your Start Screen in the menu area, instead. Click the Start button and the bottom left corner of your screen will then display your Start Screen, so you can view live tiles, perhaps launch a Windows 8 app without switching fully away from the desktop.

Verdict:

Anvi OneStart isn't a perfect duplicate of the Start Menu, and our Search issues were a particular concern.

The problems weren't consistent, though, and for the most part the program worked well. It's also very configurable, and being able to view the Start Screen on the desktop could also be useful.

There's a vast amount to learn, of course, and that's even before you start building your game. But there's plenty of documentation, tutorials, demos and sample projects to point you in the right direction.

The package is now entirely free, too - no annoying limitations, nag screens or anything else. Epic now only requires that you pay a 5% royalty after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter. And even then, you "pay no royalty for film projects, contracting and consulting projects such as architecture, simulation and visualization."

8.48 brings:
- Optimized grass rendering and procedural foliage system preview
- Plugins available in Marketplace
- Improved accuracy for motion blur
- New Tone Mapper
- Support for all the latest VR hardware including Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Steam VR and HTC Vive, Leap Motion, and Sony's Project Morpheus for PlayStation 4
- "Scrubbable" network replays with rewind support and live time scrubbing
- Visualize the memory footprint of game assets in an interactive tree map UI